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Recognizing gear failures

Failure modes typically have distinct features. Here's what to
look for.
Piermaria Davoli
Professor of Machine Design
Edoardo Conrado
Mechanical Engineer
Dept. of Mechanical Engineering
Politecnico di Milano

Klaus Michaelis
Chief Engineer
Institute for Machine Elements
Gear Research Centre (FZG)
Technische Universitat
Munchen, Germany

Edited by Lawrence Kren

Metal gears fail for numerous reasons, some, in part,

independent from the gears themselves. Assessing gear
damage can be a challenge, especially in industrial equipment.
Unlike lab tests designed to isolate a particular failure mode,
field failures may combine several modes. Rarely do engineers
have all the data needed for a complete diagnosis. And
damage that happens after the first failure can alter the final
appearance of damaged gears, further complicating the
diagnosis.

The good news is there are only five common failure modes:
bending fatigue, pitting, micropitting, scuffing, and wear.

Bending fatigue failure is the result of cyclic bending stress at

the tooth root. Stress comes from a variable-lever-arm load
that moves along the tooth profile during mesh. The damage
process follows three stages: crack nucleation, crack
propagation, and final unstable fracture. The critical section or
crack nucleation site is often at the tooth-root fillet. Here,
stresses, boosted by notch effect, reach a maximum. This tooth failed in bending fatigue and nearly separated
from the gear body.— Labs, Dept. Mech. Engr., PoliMI
After nucleation, cracks typically follow a path across the
tooth-root thickness, though they can take different paths
depending on gear shape and stiffness. For example, gears
with a lightweight, thin-rimmed body could crack along the

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gear rim.

The fracture surface typically has two distinguishable parts; a

fatigue-crack growth area and a final unstable fracture area.
Socalled "beach marks" may appear when intermittent gear
operation frequently interrupts the crackpropagation process.
Beach marks may also show up on idler gears, where both
flanks of each tooth see a reversed (alternating) stress cycle.

Pitting or macropitting is surface damage from cyclic contact

stress transmitted through a lubrication film that is in or near
the elastohydrodynamic regime. Pitting is one of the most
common causes of gear failure. It also affects antifriction
bearings, cams, and other machine components in which
surfaces undergo rolling/sliding contact under heavy load.

Damage is often local to the region of negative sliding in the

dedendum between the tooth root and pitch line. When mating
gears are of the same material and heat treatment, expect
pitting first on the gear with fewer teeth because it sees a
greater number of load cycles.

Pitting starts with the nucleation of subsurface or

surfacebreaking cracks, then propagates under repeated
contact loading. Eventually a crack grows large enough to
become unstable and reach the tooth surface. There, a small
volume of material separates, leaving a pit about 100- m deep.
A large pitting-damaged area can modify the tooth profile and
trigger vibrations and audible noise. This type of failure
happens in both through-hardened and surface-hardened
gears, though the latter often exhibit what is termed
micropitting.

Micropitting is a relatively recent phenomenon that has Fracture surface due to bending fatigue of a case-
become more prevalent owing to an increased use of carburized gear tooth (top) and a nitrided tooth
surfacehardened gears (case carburized, nitrided) made of (bottom).—Labs, Dept. Mech. Engr, PoliMI
better-quality, cleaner steel. Modern lubricants with
sophisticated additive packages that let gears work in more
extreme conditions may indirectly contribute to micropitting.

Micropitting is the formation of small craters on the tooth

surface, often in the region of negative sliding below the pitch
line. Micropits resemble macropits except they are roughly a
factor of ten smaller or about 5 to 10- m deep (0.2 to 0.4 in.)
when they first appear.

These craters nucleate from surface short cracks and

progressively remove surface material, similar to what happens
with abrasive wear. For this reason, engineers sometimes
(erroneously) label micropitting as a kind of abrasive wear. But
micropits actually are the result of rolling/sliding contact
fatigue of the tooth surface and subsurface layer. Fatigue
comes from repeated normal and tangential loads in a
boundary or mixed-lubrication regime. The ratio of oil-film Bending fatigue failure of an industrial gear from
thickness to mean-surface roughness, is considered a key alternating stress.—FZG, TU Munchen, Germany
predictor of this kind of damage.

Micropits have light-scattering properties that impart to the

affected area a frosted, light-gray appearance. That is why
micropitting is also termed frosting or gray straining.
Micropitting changes the tooth profile, mainly in the tooth-flank
areas that see negative sliding, though severe cases can
involve the entire flank. This altering of the tooth profile and
meshing can raise transmission error, dynamic loads, as well

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as vibration and noise levels. Further, micropitting and the

surface cracks that develop because of it often serve as
candidate locations for macropitting. Micropitting may also
promote bending fatigue failures in tooth flanks.

Scuffing, also termed "scoring" (incorrect according to gear

standards), is a severe type of adhesive wear which instantly
damages tooth surfaces that are in relative motion. In fact, a
single overload can lead to catastrophic failure.

Scuffing welds together unprotected surfaces in metal-tometal

contact. Metal particles detach and transfer from one or both
meshing teeth. During successive rotations, these particles can
scratch teeth flanks in the sliding direction. This type of
damage generally happens in areas of high contact pressure
and sliding velocity, far from the pitch surface. Conditions
there are less favorable to form a protective lubricant layer
that would prevent direct metal-tometal contact. This
protective layer could be a thick oil film (relative to surface
roughness) or an adsorbed or chemically deposited layer
established by lubricant additives.

In any case, lubricant and lubricating conditions, not material Bending fatigue failure with beach marks.—FZG, TU
strength, are responsible for scuffing damage. Scuffing often Munchen, Germany
happens to new gears when tooth surfaces are not yet well
run-in. Experiments show that a newly manufactured surface is
able to carry only 20% of the load of a well run-in surface. The
risk of scuffing goes up as lubricant degrades over time or
becomes contaminated with metal particles or water. It is
sometimes difficult to distinguish between surface scratches
from instantaneous scuffing or those from wear.

Wear is a continuous, abrasive process of material removal

from matinggear teeth that happens with or without abrasive
particles in the oil. For example, hard asperities on gear flanks
can remove material from mating flanks. Removal of the
hardened layer from surface-hardened gears accelerates wear.
Extremely worn spur gears have pointed teeth and a reduced
profile contact ratio. Continual wear of tooth roots weakens the
gear until it breaks.

Wear typically happens under boundary or mixedlubricating

conditions lacking a thick supporting oil film that would
otherwise separate tooth surfaces. Mild antiwear additives that
help protect surfaces with adsorbed or reacted layers under
critical lubricating conditions lessen wear.

Typical pitting damage.—Labs, Dept. Mech. Engr., PoliMI

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Micropitting damage on the teeth of a test gear.—FZG, TU

Munchen, Germany

Severe scuffing on test gears.—FZG, TU Munchen, Germany

Scuffing

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Wear

A comparison of scuffed and worn test gears of identical

geometry. Scuffing is concentrated in areas of high sliding
velocity. No scuffing takes place at the pitch point (pure
rolling). Conversely, wear is visible along the entire tooth
height and across the pitch line.—FZG, TU Munchen,
Germany

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Wear in a hoisting gear train.—FZG, TU Munchen, Germany

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